Reading through many other threads about all the negative impacts of NIL, I had a thought that perhaps a positive would be a rebound in football participation. With a clear financial incentive now present at the college level, rather than having to make it to "the league," would that potentially change the mind of parents or children that may have not deemed the risk worth the reward previously?
Doubtful you could get soccer moms and dads to come back. Now put some guarantees on it and you will get plenty.
Interesting thought, but I doubt it. The allure of playing football at a major college program was always pretty big, if you're good enough as an athlete to excel at major college football and you're not an all-american at basketball then you were very likely aiming to play college football since it has the most free tickets to college. Not that many college kids are getting life-changing NIL money right now, and a good number of the ones that are probably are NFL-bound eventually. There's a few exception to that, e.g. Cam Ward will probably make $1M+ this season but doesn't have an NFL career ahead of him, but I think cases like that will be mostly limited to a handful of good QBs a year.
